The back of the door you open looks scarred, as if someone has been shooting spells at it. Indeed, now that you look closer, the scratches actually spell out something.

Close the Door.

How bizzare...?!

The words suddenly flame a bright liquid yellow, and the door yanks itself out of your frozen grasp and slams itself shut. The women sitting at the desk barely looks up at the bang. She appears to be writing something slowly, and deliberately, and you wait while the quiet, but somehow menacing scritch-scritch of the quill goes on.

Meanwhile, you take the oppurtunity to look around the room. There are a few pictures lying around the place, soft, swirling, bright splashes of color that could mean anything - a tree, a flower, a cloud, but mostly the wall is plastered with bookshelves, and they in turn, are stuffed with books. A few of them look like they are trying to bite, but can only squirm instead, fastened with black leather bands. Most are more docile, and rather decorative, with smooth spines and delicately drawn words on the covers, in all shades of dark colors.

On top of the bookshelves are perched thin, golden shining things, some bear resemblance to astrolabes, others look a little like windchimes. A few hang from the ceiling, and one particular one is hung over with delicate beads - of crystal or plastic, you can't quite tell. Between them, they catch the light of the room and toss it, glint, glitter, glimmer, glisten, gleam, about, creating provocative shadows and sudden bursts of scintillating light.

But professor doesn't look like the sort of woman who would choose things like these. You look back at her, still writing. She's a lounging sort of creature, with very thick, very black hair that has been pulled back into a bun, though thick waves of it fall forward over her ears. Her skin has a yellow tint, or that might be the lighting. The teak desk she is writing on bears a nameplate. The words shine the same way the scratches on the door did.

Prof. Andi Mao-Macdougal Zizhen

She has long sweeping eyelashes, perhaps overmascara-ed, that brush her cheeks. When she finally pushes away the paper, and holds the quill between two of her fingers, like she's smoking (you suspect that she was just drawing lines on parchment, to prolong your discomfort) the quick look Professor Mao-Macdougal gives you is like ash falling off a cigarette.

She is definitely Chinese - or half Chinese, with eyes that are tilted upwards. She looks tall, but that's only because she holds herself tall and somehow manages to look down her nose on you when you're a head taller. Over the summer, Professor Mao-Macdougal has successfully kicked the smoking habit, though it has not noticeably sweetened her temper.

She leans forward on the table, her eyebrows barely going up in a minimal show of interest. "Yes?" Professor Mao-Macdougal says, quietly. "May I... help you?"

And there is something in her tone that threatens: this had better be good or nothing in the world is going to help you, except maybe those nice trained Healers at St. Mungo's.